The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 224

Faith in the Future 

HANNAH’S POV: 

“In the first three years,” Adele said, “everything that mattered in that company was your mother. Every design. Every piece that made people pay attention. The aesthetic that made the fashion world sit up and notice. Aldric was good at the business side. But the thing that made people care, that was entirely Mirada.” 

And then Mirada became pregnant with me. 

Adele’s voice stayed even as she said the next part. Aldric had started making decisions without Mirada once the pregnancy showed. Small ones first. Removing her name from documents. Changing credits on pieces. Building a version of the story in which the success of the house was his vision and her contribution was just execution, taking something real and making it lesser. And when Mirada was eight months pregnant and exhausted and fighting on too many fronts, he had put a second contract in front of her. The language of it was softer than the original. Blurred where the first one had been clear. Creative consultant instead of founding partner. Profits at the discretion of the managing partner. A paragraph that sounded like administrative tidying but was a door being quietly unlocked. 

She had signed it. Because she was tired and she trusted him and she thought there would be time to correct it properly after the baby came. 

There was no time. She died with my father in a car accident. 

“She kept everything,” Adele said. She stood and went to the back of the kitchen and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser and carried back a folder. Old and thick, rubber band gone stiff from years in the same position. She set it in front of me. “The original partnership agreement. Letters in which he acknowledged the work was hers. Copies of designs she submitted with her signature, and those same designs that later appeared under his name. She kept all of it and she gave it to me to keep.” Adele’s eyes were wet. “And then I found out about the fire and I knew I had waited too long. I should have told you sooner. I am sorry.” 

I opened the folder. 

The rubber band broke when I tried to slide it off and I peeled the pieces away. Elijah quietly took them and dropped them in the bin under the table. 

I took out the sketches first. 

I want to be clear that I did not look at them with sentiment. I looked at them the way I look at all design work, which is to say with the specific knowledge of someone who has spent years in this industry and knows what separates a good sketch from a truly great one. And these sketches were extraordinary. The line quality was loose and confident in the way that only comes from genuine mastery. The margin notes in small careful handwriting describing fabric choices and construction questions. One place where she had redrawn a collar twice and then a third time until she got what she wanted, which I knew immediately was exactly the right choice. 

I turned one sketch over. 

On the back, in that same careful script: a date. And two words. For Mirada. 

She had signed her own work to herself. Like she already knew she was going to need a record. 

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